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Guidelines for Organizing Short
Academic Trips
This document is intended to guide and advise Monmouth College faculty in the planning of short academic trips abroad. Please contact Tom Sienkewicz (toms@monm.edu) for questions.
Faculty interested in organizing short travel trips (during winter break, spring break, post-Commencement, etc.) are encouraged to work with the Co-ordinator of off-campus study in planning and implementation.
The first step is to get a travel course approved by the curriculum committee. This can be done initially as a 250-course, and eventually a regular course can be approved by the faculty.
A good rule of thumb is that a 5-7 day trip earns one credit. For this credit students are typically asked to keep a journal or provide a detailed summary of the trip when they get back. Some departments make a second credit available if students agree to follow up the work for one credit with academic research and paper on some aspect of the trip. At least two orientation sessions are required prior to departure, one organized by the trip leaders and another by the coordinator of off-campus study. A written trip evaluation will also be administered by the trip leaders. Copies of these evaluations will be submitted to the coordinator of off-campus study.
Students are required to register for the trip course in the semester in which the trip takes place or in the preceding semester (in the case of winter break and post-commencement trips). If registering for this trip puts the student’s load above 18 credits, the student will be responsible for college fees for these additional credits. But students can also register for the course trip as audit. Only Monmouth College students registered for credit or audit will be permitted to participate in this trip. The only exceptions are MC faculty, staff, and spouses. Alumni can participate in these trips but will have to make their own travel arrangements.
In advertising these trips it is important to set a deadline by which students are committed financially to the trip. Typically these deadlines are the end of September for first semester and the middle of February for second semester, but deadlines must be determined by available airfares and airline regulations. Any student registered for this trip after the designated drop date will be billed for the full cost of the trip by Monmouth College (non-refundable). As a general rule, no college funds will be advanced for a trip until after this deadline. The only exception to this rule would be the purchase of refundable airlines reservations.
Students participating in short academic trips are required to submit the Dean of Student's Recommendation Form before the commitment deadline. They will also be required to read and sign the following form: Rules and Expectations for Short Academic Trips.
The next step is to get the actual trip budget and itinerary approved. This material must be submitted to the coordinator of off-campus study by Sept. 15th for spring semester courses and by April 15th for fall semester courses. The proposed budget should include all expenses for faculty sponsors. Additional college funds will not be used to support these trips, which must pay for themselves. This proposal will be reviewed by a committee consisting of the chair of the Curriculum Committee, the coordinator of off-campus study, the Dean of the Faculty, and a representative from the business office.
If an
employee is using professional travel funds approved by FID to
subsidize travel related to this trip, the college will book
these funds to the
employee as a travel advance and will
consider this amount receivable from the
employee until such time as receipts for the expenses
are submitted. At that point the college
will remove the receivable and expense the
appropriate amount against the faculty development travel
budget.
A more detailed manual of guidelines is available from the coordinator of off-campus study. |